Two years after his conviction for fraud, currency trader John Rusnak has spoken out about his life in prison - revealing that he is going to Bible studies, exercising and teaching personal finance to fellow inmates.

Rusnak (40) who covered up losses of $691 million (€523 million) over five years at Allfirst Bank in Baltimore, Maryland, is also teaching a high-school equivalency class to other prisoners.

Reflecting on his turbulent time at Allfirst, then owned by AIB, he said that he was relieved "to be away from that", even though he was in prison.

There was an atmosphere that when he looked back on it "makes me sick", he said, and he felt 20 years younger being away from the pressure.

Rusnak was speaking to Laura Smitherman of the Baltimore Sun in his first interview since he was sentenced in 2003.

After pleading guilty to one count of bank fraud, Rusnak was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment in 2003.

Rusnak is serving his sentence in a minimum security facility in West Virginia.

While he was criticised in a report on the bank's losses by former US Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig for bullying and abusing co-workers who questioned his activities, Rusnak said "people being berated was standard practice in the trading room."

His wife Linda told the newspaper that her husband had moved on "and hopefully everyone else has, too."

A spokeswoman for AIB in Dublin said the matters referred to by Rusnak in the interview were dealt with by the Ludwig report and the US courts, "as a result of which Mr Rusnak was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to the prison term he is currently serving."

The imprisoned trader would not answer questions about the role of other bank officials when he was hiding his losses.

He said: "I've had time to think about everything that happened, and it's best for me and best for my rehabilitation if I focus on what I did and not on the actions of others."

He gave the interview against the advice of his lawyer because he had "an overwhelming desire to tell people what was in my mind and in my heart."

He wanted to say that he realised the magnitude of the crime and how much it had hurt people. Rusnak, who outside the bank was known as a family man and regular church-goer, hid his losses by creating fictitious trades that made it appear he had hedged losing bets on the Japanese yen, even creating a file called "fake docs".

The scandal led to the departure of seven bank executives from Allfirst which has since been sold to M&T Bank in Buffalo with the loss of 1,100 jobs.

The portrait of a penitent Rusnak fits with the picture close friends of the trader sketched for The Irish Times before his sentencing.

When the scandal broke on February 6th, 2002, he had to tell Linda what he had kept from her for five years, that he had been accumulating and hiding massive losses and counterfeiting trades at Allfirst and now faced prison.

Her response at the time was to tell him that if he didn't get straight, she would leave him.

Even before sentencing the currency dealer was focused on rebuilding his marriage and coming to terms with the guilt that he felt over the fate of his suspended colleagues.